


Exposed Shards

by Elenhin



Category: The Almighty Johnsons
Genre: Gen, Valerie is not really nice....
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2013-11-23
Packaged: 2018-01-02 10:43:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elenhin/pseuds/Elenhin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Apparently there is a third sequel to Shards. I was not aware of this at first, but there is, and here it is. The third part in the Shards saga. </p>
<p>Shards was based on the word Shards from the One Word at a Time series by Aramirandme81 who most generously gave me the word as a challenge. </p>
<p>Anders has some microscopic scars around one eye, but never told Mike they were from a fight with Valerie. Now however the truth has been exposed, and that is what happens in this third part.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exposed Shards

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aramirandme81](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aramirandme81/gifts).



> For Aramirandme81, who told me that there would be a third part.... thank you, and I hope that you enjoy it. *hugs*

Exposed Shards

 

Cleaning the small wounds around Anders eye is a very time consuming task Dawn finds out. The doctor wanted her to do it several times a day and as two of them are weeping some liquid she can see the wisdom in that. She has seen the collection of microscopic scars many times but never thought much about them. Then just yesterday she found out they were the result of Valerie smashing a wineglass in his face during an argument when he was young.

 

She remembers Valerie, quite well actually. Anders was after all the one who worked the deal for Rob to talk about his coma, and Dawn had gone with him and Valerie on the trip.She hadn’t much cared for the way Valerie spoke of Anders then, she appeared to have always put part of the blame for everything on Anders and that did not make sense. Anders could be very, very selfish and she had no doubt he must have been difficult to deal with as a teenager, but she was talking about a time when Anders couldn’t have been much more than eleven, and still the blame was on him. She had a feeling that maybe she had found it so hard to handle Anders becuase she had never really accepted him. If there was one thing she knew it was that Anders had plenty of flaws but if you accepted that he could be a very nice guy. Valerie appeared to resent the fact that Mike had paid attention to Anders which did not make sense since she knew that Mike had been forced to take care of all three of his younger brothers. It did not make sense to her, why Valerie would think Anders undeserving of his brother’s attention.

 

Now she was learning she had not only ignored him but also abused him, hitting him with an already broken wine glass and nearly costing him his eye. Realizing how close it had been nearly made her feel sick.

 

Anders had not known that there had been tiny fragments of glass remaining in the cuts. He had thought they were all gone, but one had started shifting. Moving under the skin until the tip of it was actually scratching against his eyeball.

 

Dawn didn’t know what she thought was the worst part, that all these years he had been walking around with tiny slivers of glass still stuck in the scars, or being told that something striking his eye might have pushed the sliver right into his eyeball and it could still have cost him his eye. Any small bump might have blinded him on one eye, and it did make Dawn feel sick.

 

No one else knew about it either, because after it happened Valerie had bullied Anders into not saying anything about it. She had said that if he told the truth the authorities would have taken Axl and Ty away from Mike and put them in foster care. That wasn’t true. Valerie would have been brought up on charges of abuse but it would not have resulted in the brothers being split up.

 

Anders had not known that, he was barely conscious at the time and all he could think of was what she  told him. That if he told the truth his brothers would be taken away and it would be his fault.

 

So he had lied then and had never told the truth to anyone before now.

 

It did explain why he was very sensitive and uncomfortable with having anyone doing something near his eyes.

 

Even now when she tried to clean the cuts he was pulling back and tried to turn his head away.

 

“Anders, please try to hold still,” she urged. She was using a q-tip to clean the tiny incision. She had made him lie down on the couch and now sat beside him but he kept flinching and pulling away.

 

“I’m trying, but it’s not so fucking easy when you jab at me with that thing,” he complained.

 

“I am not jabbing, I’m doing this very slowly and gently,” she informed him. There was a lot of swelling around the eye at the moment so he could not really open it and the gauze patch would keep dirt away. It looked quite nasty, a little bleeding under the skin forming bruises around the four small wounds. Three under the eye, and one near the outer corner. It looked as if someone had punched him, a nice shiner with a few small cuts.

 

“Close your other eye,” she demanded. “You know I will be careful Anders, you do not need to watch me.”

 

“Maybe not,” slowly he closed his eye and steeled himself and she was finally able to clean the wounds. Grabbing a clean gauze patch and taping it over the wound.

 

Technically he was fine to live on his own, but Dawn had convinced him to stay with her. Not because he could not manage it but because he should not have to manage on his own the way she saw it. His depth perception was slightly off and he was fumbling a little more. He wasn’t supposed to drive so she would have to pick him up anyway.

 

She was just about to clean the wounds again when Mike entered the office and she saw Anders stiffen. Obviously he did not want his brother to know what had happened, but Dawn was still firm in her belief that he should know so she was glad to see Mike.

 

“Anders, we’re getting together tonight,” Mike started, then broke off as he saw him and the patch taped over his eye. “What the fuck happened to you?”

 

“It’s nothing,” Anders ducked his head, trying to hide the glaring white bandage from his sight.

 

“Anders,” Dawn folded her arms across her chest.

 

“Okay, what did you do?” Mike asked and Anders looked up with a glare and a pout.

 

“It’s nothing Mike, nothing at all,” he insisted.

 

“I don’t believe you, especially not the way you’re acting,” Mike mused, looking towards Dawn.

 

“Either you tell him, or I will,” Dawn stated firmly.

 

“Fine,” Anders gave them both a pout and a hurt look. “I had to have some bits of glass removed.”

 

“Glass?” Mike frowned. “How the fuck did you get glass there?”

 

Sighting Anders fidgeted a little, “it didn’t happen now Mike. When I was a kid, remember? I got a glass smashed in my face, in a fight.  Apparently they didn’t get all the glass out, and now a sliver was shifting around.”

 

“Shifting around so that it was nearly digging into the eye,” Dawn supplied. “Any of the wrong kind of pressure could, and would likely have driven it into the eyeball. If that had happened he might have lost the eye.”

 

“Jesus,” Mike swore. “I thought they took care about that back then. Valerie took you to the doctor and they fixed it.”

 

Anders fidgeted, twisting uncomfortably, “They missed a couple of pieces. I guess that’s not very surprising given what a mess it was. There were four slivers left, they’re gone now, so it’s fine.”

 

“No it’s not,” Dawn put in and Anders glared at her.

 

“I didn’t get into a fight at school Mike,” he sighed, resigning himself to his fate. “I lied about that, because I didn’t want you to know what really happened.”

 

“You managed to sneak into some bar?” Mike guessed. It would be just like his brother, but now Anders looked really hurt.

 

“No, I did not,” he stated sharply. “Jesus, can’t you figure just once that maybe I wasn’t the one who fucked things up?

 

“It usually is you though, so what did you do?” Mike wanted to know.

 

“I was a fucking kid Mike!” Anders snapped, leaping to his feet and Dawn was taken back. It was a very rare thing to see Anders react so sharply and Mike realized it too for his eyes widened and he took a step back. “I didn’t get drunk, I didn’t screw with anyone and I was too fucking young to sleep with anyone’s wife or girlfriend. But I bet that doesn’t matter to you. It’s me so I was the one who fucked it up becuase I always am, right Mike? It’s always me, isn’t it?” He demanded.

 

“Usually, I still say it is, but apparently not this time,” Mike kept his calm. “So what really happened?”

 

“Doesn’t matter,” Anders got up and went to the fridge, grabbing the vodka bottle there he started pouring but cursed when he spilled. It was trickier than you might think when you only had one eye.

 

“It does matter,” Dawn put in and Mike nodded.

 

“Here, it looks like you need this in you more than you need it on the floor,” Mike plucked the bottle from his hand and started pouring a small measure into the glass.

 

“I don’t need a fucking lecture!” Anders half snapped. “I drink what I want to drink when I want to drink it.”

 

“And you’re stalling too,” Mike grinned. “Won’t work with me, but if you’re stalling, I’d say you could really use a drink.” He gave him the glass and motioned him to the couch. “Now, I really want to know this, and if you don’t tell me, I’ll ask Dawn since she apparently knows. How did you get hit with the glass Anders?”

 

“I was arguing with Valerie, she was really pissed and so was I, don’t know what I said but she slammed the glass down, broke the foot off, then smashed it into my face,” Anders mumbled into the vodka glass.

 

“Valerie?” Mike gasped.

 

“She was on that herbal hormone shit, made her unpredictable as hell,” Anders muttered. “So yeah, it was Val, then she took me to the doctor to fix it up.”

 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” it never crossed his mind that Anders might be lying. Anders would lie about a lot of things, but not about this, and you never had to drag a lie out of him. This was the truth and Mike knew it.

 

“Because I was a fucking mess,” he half snapped again. “I had just gotten a glass smashed into my face, do you really imagine I was thinking clearly? She said that if anyone found out, they’d take Axl and Ty away and it would be my fault. She spelled that out clearly enough. And I knew you’d hate me if that happened. Hell, I figured you might be glad to be rid of me, but if it cost you them you’d kill me. And I wasn’t about to let them be taken into foster care. Never Mike, so I lied like she told me to.”

 

“You shouldn’t have,” Mike breathed softly. “It was wrong.”

 

“Well, thanks for telling me now!” Anders lept to his feet. “That’s great knowing, but it doesn’t change a fucking thing. And you wouldn’t have believed me anyway. Not if I had told you that your precious girlfriend tried to cut my eye out with a broken glass. You wouldn’t have believed me and you know it.”

 

Mike sighed sadly, not knowing what to tell Anders. He was worked up and agitated now, “I wish you had told me Anders.”

 

“What for? You wouldn’t have believed me, you wouldn’t even have cared. You gave me house arrest,” Anders pointed out. “Didn’t think I was suffering enough from it, I couldn’t even go to the sleepover and you knew how much that meant to me, only time I got away from Valerie. And she couldn’t even do that much, couldn’t even tell you to let me go. So I got punished for it, but that’s the way it usually went, wasn’t it?”

 

“You said you got into a fight Anders, I couldn’t have known what happened. That’s why I wish you had told me,” he started calmly. Anders drained the vodka and managed to pour himself some more. “I can’t believe Val did that, but I believe you. I just don’t know how to make it right. It’s a bit late to bring charges against her for it.”

 

Anders paused in his pacing, turning around. “You wouldn’t have done that.”

 

“I would have,” Mike stated firmly. “I would now if I thought it would do any good. But it would never work.”

 

“You wouldn’t have,” Anders dropped his head, sounding almost desperate to believe that Mike would indeed have done that.

 

“I would have in an instant,” he stated grimly. “How do you think I feel now Anders? My wife did that to you, and not just what you had to go through at the time, but now I hear it might still have caused you to lose your eye, for something my wife did, and you felt you had to lie about it. What kind of brother does that make me? How do you think I feel right now?”

 

“Pretty shitty,” Anders managed a small smile, putting down his glass.

 

“Pretty shitty doesn’t begin to cover it,” Mike snorted. “I feel a bit lower than that.”

 

“Well you should, Val was a bitch,” Anders declared. “A manipulative bitch. I guess she thought you’d be mad. She wanted to make sure you never found out. Guess some of it was for Ty and Axl, but I bet it was for her sake.”

 

“Probably,” Mike agreed. “Are you okay now?”

 

“Yeah, they made an X-ray so they found all the slivers and took them out,” Anders told him.

 

“Good, that’s good,” he stated. “But are you okay?”

 

Anders turned around to face him, a little surprised. “Mad, I guess, but I think so.”

 

Mike nodded slowly, “Do you need any help with that?”

 

“He’s staying at my place for the moment,” Dawn put in now. “But it’s time to clean it again, and he can’t keep still. If you can keep him from moving while I take care of it, that would be great.”

 

“I think I can do that,” Mike grinned. “Come on Anders,” He sat down on the couch so that Anders rested his head in his lap, holding his hands gently but firmly on either side of his face so that he couldn’t move away from Dawn.

 

Knowing he had missed the signs of Valerie continuing the abuse their parents had started made him feel awful.

 

The question was, what more had Valerie done that he still had no idea about?

  
The End


End file.
